Ask The Taxgirl: Deducting Fidget Spinners On Your Taxes

Eight-year-old Tom Wuestenberg (L) and his ten-year-old brother Louis play with fidget spinners in a park in New York on May 23, 2017. (Photo credit: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

Taxpayer asks:

My son has a problem paying attention and his doctor told me that I should buy him fidget spinners to help. Can I take this off on my taxes?

Taxgirl says:

You'd be surprised at how many fidget spinner questions I receive!

For those who aren't familiar with a fidget spinner, it's a toy, shaped a bit like a triangle, that's designed to spin with little effort. Fidget spinners have been around for more than 20 years but became wildly popular over the past year or so - retailers couldn't keep them in stock. They typically sell for a dollar or so per piece though some top out at hundreds of dollars each.

In this photo illustration, a woman holds a fidget spinner, May 5, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Fidget spinners have become the latest toy sensation and some schools have banned them because they've become a distraction. (Photo Illustration by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

While fidget spinners were originally designed to be toys, some doctors and therapists have found that they can be calming for children who are diagnosed with autism, attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or anxiety. The repetitive motion of the toy - like other fidgets - makes it easy to redirect anxiety: the distraction may have the effect of helping the child relax.

Whether that's enough to qualify the fidget spinner as a medical expense on your tax return would depend on the child and the doctor. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) allows you to deduct expenses paid for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or payments for treatments affecting any structure or function of the body. The key piece is that a specific diagnosis is necessary and the cure or treatment - like a fidget spinner - must be specifically ordered by the doctor. If your child's doctor advises you to pick up a fidget spinner because it might be helpful or calming, that’s not sufficient for purposes of the deduction. However, if your child's doctor prescribes a fidget spinner in response to a specific medical condition, like autism, that should qualify as a medical expense. (An added bonus: fidget spinners are banned in some places, like schools, without a note from a doctor: a prescription can kill two birds with one stone).

You can only claim health and medical expenses if you itemize your deductions on your form 1040, at Schedule A, Itemized Deductions (downloads as a pdf). That's the first hurdle: only about a third of all taxpayers itemize their deductions. The next hurdle is even more challenging: you may deduct only the amount of your total medical expenses that exceed 10% of your adjusted gross income (AGI).

Here's a quick example. Let's say that all of your medical expenses total $5,000 for the year - and you itemize your deductions.

If your AGI is $20,000, you can deduct $3,000 since $5,000 of expenses less $2,000 (10% of $20,000 AGI) = $3,000.

If your AGI is $50,000 or more, you cannot claim a deduction since $5,000 of expenses less $5,000 (10% of $50,000 AGI) = 0.

So there you go. Use the same criteria to figure deductibility for fidget spinners as you would any other potential medical treatment. Ask yourself:

Is there a diagnosis for a bona fide medical condition?

Do I have a prescription?

Does the math work out?

You'll need to say yes to all three to claim the expense.

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Before you go: be sure to read my disclaimer. Remember, I’m a lawyer and we love disclaimers.